Strongly interacting bosons in a synthetic magnetic field

The interplay between magnetic fields and interacting particles can lead to exotic phases of matter that exhibit topological order and high degrees of entanglement. Although these phases were discovered in a solid-state setting, recent innovations in systems of ultracold neutral atoms allow the synthesis of artificial magnetic fields. However, so far these experiments have mostly explored the regime of weak interactions, which precludes access to correlated many-body states.

We demonstrate the controlled generation of strongly correlated many-body states of bosons in a magnetic field. We use a bottom-up strategy based on quantum state engineering in the interacting Harper-Hofstadter model with tunable flux. Starting from a Fock state with a fixed number of particles, we perform a quantum annealing ramp that adiabatically connects the initial state with the target state. This allows us to reach quantum states of different fillings, particle numbers, and system sizes.